Northwestern finishes season at State Robotics Championship | Local news

Kokomo’s Memorial Gym was pandemonium on Friday and Saturday, but it wasn’t basketball taking center stage on the hardwood. Instead, it was robots running rampant.

The top 32 robotics teams in the state descended on Kokomo the weekend for the IndianaFIRST Power Up Robotics State Championship. Out of approximately 56 teams in the state, the ones at Memorial Gym represented the cream of the crop in this year’s deep space-themed adventure, earning their spot by qualifying through district events heading into the championships.

Northwestern’s CyberTooth 3940 robotics team represented the area well as Howard County’s sole team at the championships. Consisting of 16 students and around 10 mentors, CyberTooth advanced to Saturday’s semifinal round before falling to the No. 2 alliance.

The Northwestern squad earned its spot at the championship by winning the IndianaFIRST St. Joseph District Event at Penn High School in Mishawaka in March, taking first place out of 42 teams.

“We won our first event since our first year in 2012,” said Northwestern junior Lucy Baker, in her third year with CyberTooth. “That was huge. We kind of found just what was right for our team this year through design and a lot of strategy. We’ve had a really successful year and I think this year has been great just to see everybody kind of branch out from what they’re comfortable with and just sort of do different things for the team and grow in confidence and leadership.”

Carmel’s TechHOUNDS 868 was the top team at the event, joining with No. 2 team Cyber Blue 234 from Perry Meridian High School in Indianapolis and Kil-A-Bytes 1024 from Indianapolis’ McKenzie Center for Innovation and Technology to win the state championship.

The best of the best from over the weekend move on to the World Championship, which will be held in Detroit April 24-27. Indiana will send 10 teams to the world championship. Kokomo’s TechnoKats 45 will compete in the world championship. While they did not compete over the weekend, they are a FIRST Legacy team, one of the 28 original teams to compete in the inaugural FIRST competition in 1992.

Teams were decked out in a variety of colors and flare including capes, cowboy hats and in Northwestern’s case, its signature purple tutus, complete with lights.

“We always like to wear our tutu’s, we’ve been doing this for many years,” said Northwestern junior Vivianne Pentland, who is in her third year with CyberTooth. “We wanted to spice it up a little and take it to the next level so we actually hemmed in some lights. We wanted to see how we could tie the theme into our look.”

Pentland and her teammates also had a new solar system logo on their tye-dye purple shirts, glitter on many of their faces, and holographic shoulder points to further the futuristic, spacey vibe.

The robots were just as interesting. One chomped down in a way reminiscent of Hungry Hippos while another featured lights flashing brightly as it raced around the floor.

“I see lots of diversity technically in the robots” said Andy Baker, owner of AndyMark and a sponsor for the event. “I see some teams focusing on one aspect of the game while other teams might focus on a totally different aspect. To me it’s kind of like Christmas morning when I see everyone’s robot. I see all these different wonderful ideas come to life with these robots.

“These kids are super smart,” he added. “They all have wonderful ideas. It’s neat to see all these ideas come to life.”

CyberTooth’s robot was named StingRay.

“We just thought it was a cool name and it kind of looks like a stingray when it’s all popped out,” Lucy Baker said.

This year’s theme, Destination Deep Space, consisted of a storyline with competing alliances collecting samples on Planet Primus. In the face of unpredictable terrain and weather patterns, the use of remote robot operation is essential to the mission, setting the stage for the teams of competing robots – three per alliance – to complete their mission by moving a series of discs and balls into cargo ship and rocket structures on the playing field.

“The game this year is based on the manipulation of balls and hatch panels,” Northwestern senior Chris Smith said. “We have to get them into different scoring locations. You can’t have a ball in a location without a hatch panel. Otherwise it will fall out. You go around scoring them in the cargo ship and the rockets.”

Participants stand behind large glass screens to remotely operate the robots, which cannot exceed 120 pounds and must adhere to other height and weight parameters. The robots try to gather as many cargo pods as possible over two and a half minutes. Over the first :15, black screens essentially blind participants behind the screens to mimic a sandstorm, meaning they must rely on cameras to move the robots.

When the black screens lift and visibility returns, the operators can look straight ahead at their robots. Then, over the final: 30, robots climb onto a pad, which is a series of raised platforms.

That’s when StingRay pulls off its signature flip, its arms extending and gripping onto the tallest platform and flipping itself over to land six points.

“If you look at it you have no clue what this thing does,” first-year CyberTooth mentor Mica Cain-Hoover said. “It’s small. And then it just opens up and does all these crazy, cool things. It’s really cool to watch the kids push themselves. That’s my favorite part to see.”

Cain-Hoover was part of the first CyberTooth team as a senior in 2012. She’s glad the tutu’s are still around.

“Me and my friend started the tutu on the first team,” Cain-Hoover said. “I was very pleased when I kept following the team when I went to school that they were still rockin’ the tutus.”

She was also pleased that the robotics team changed her life course.

“I came back because I missed it a lot. It was a huge, pivotal point in my life. Going into my senior year I had no clue what I was going to do.”

She thought she might study English, but the FIRST experience and the guidance she received from her mentors, specifically Andy Baker, led her to completely switch her career path. She went to Purdue to study engineering.

“Because of that I wanted to come back and if I can help one student have the experience that I did then it will make everything I’ve ever done worth it,” said Cain-Hoover.

Today, she works at the FCA Chrysler Tipton plant as one of the resident engineers in the 9-speed division. She spends her free time, up to five days a week, with CyberTooth.

“It’s worth it. Going to work a little tired to give these kids a little extra attention is worth it for me.”

CyberTooth opened Friday’s competition with the No. 6 seed and sat at No. 11 following 64 qualification matches leading into Saturday afternoon’s alliance selection where the field of 32 dwindled to 24 as the top eight seeds picked alliances. CyberTooth was picked to join West Lafayette’s Westside Boiler 461 and Bloomington South’s The Quadrangles 3494.

Sitting in the stands as alliances were announced, Pentland had her fingers crossed before CyberTooth learned it would live on as part of alliance 6, which took out alliance 3 with two straight wins in the best-of-three quarterfinals, 67-58 and 84-73, to advance to the semis before falling 82-77 and 87-77 to alliance 2 in the semifinal round.

“It’s a good season just with all the connections and people you get to talk to and we did win our first event since our rookie season which is really cool,” Pentland said. “Some of the students on this team I’ve known since fourth grade and it’s just really cool to be with them and see all of our hard work pay off. Whether we win or not, we’re still a team. We spend a lot of time with these people, a lot of time in the shop.”

Emily Pickard is a freshman in her first year with the CyberTooth program.

“It’s really fun,” Pickard said. “We just have a really good time together.”

Mary Baker said the importance of FIRST keeps her and the other mentors excited and involved.

“We believe in what FIRST does,” she said. “It provides an opportunity for students to be exposed to STEM careers, to work side by side with mentors who can help them figure out problem strategy and project management.”